XML Companion, The, Third Edition

Preserved space

A distinction is made between the act of leaving all whitespace characters intact, and normalizing whitespace down to a single character. When left intact, the whitespace is said to be preserved. When normalized, it is said to have collapsed, and this is usually what is desired.

XML:space attribute

The document author has some control over normalization of whitespace in the text, using a reserved attribute named ' xml:space'.

If this attribute is applied to a specific element, and given a value of 'preserve', then all whitespace in that element is deemed to be significant:

<para xml:space="preserve">ISO Central Secretariat
1, Rue de Varembe
CH-1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland</para>

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